


a study in guilt

by evitably



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Absent Parents, Gen, Missing Scene, POV Outsider, Terminal Illnesses, episode 137
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1265389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evitably/pseuds/evitably
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ging and Killua meet, and Gon is not there to introduce them.<br/>(he's on the other side of the glass window, dying.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a study in guilt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Qem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qem/gifts).



> Dear Qem: you didn't know this was in the making, but I am very sorry for its lateness nonetheless. I've wanted to write this (and especially the hospital scene) ever since I saw your prompt way back in October, but haven't had the chance until now. I hope you enjoy it, and that you're having a good year so far!
> 
> Many thanks to [kawaiiglasses](http://kawaiiglasses.tumblr.com/) for the beta. All remaining mistakes are wholly my own.

Ging's fingers slide across the keyboard, tapping each key with careless familiarity, gaze locked on the monitor with an intensity that frightens him a little.

_A lot._

The hospital's internal database is a bit of a mess without the program that should present the data in a visually-pleasant manner, but Ging has dealt with worse, and knows exactly what's relevant to him and what isn't. He types _F-R-E-E-C-S, G-O-N_ into a search function, and waits with his heart in his throat until the walls of text present him the requested patient.

 _Freecs, Gon_. Male. Fourteen years old. Diagnosis: systemic atrophy, cause unknown. Plan of treatment: none; currently on life support. Prognosis: death.

Ging takes in a breath. It's harsh in his ears, but he knows it's no more than a puff of air.

 _Prognosis: death_.

No, that can't happen.

He picks up his phone.

Nearly three hours later, Ging has his answers. He still has the window with Gon's medical prognosis open in the background, and he calls it back up and stares at it.

 _Freecs, Gon_ , he reads, voicing the words in his head, tasting them in the back of his throat without letting any of the sounds out. _Male. Fourteen years old. Diagnosis: systemic atrophy, caused by nen limitation. Possible treatment: nen exorcism - unlikely; no known nen exorcist strong enough to lift the limitation; currently on life support. Prognosis: death. ___

Ging puts his phone back down, slouches in his chair, and stares ahead unseeingly.

The hospital Gon is at isn't far. Ging's in town anyway, waiting for a meeting of the Zodiacs, and going to see Gon is as easy as picking up his legs and walking. If only he could bring himself to make that first step ...

Doing that would be as good as admitting defeat, though: Gon is not going to get better. Gon is not going to find him. There will be no possible _later_ to dread and hope for in equal measures.

 _Prognosis: death_.

This is Ging's last opportunity to see his son alive.

*

The hospital corridor Gon's room is in is too well-lit for this time at night. White fluorescent rains down on Ging, whose footsteps echo hollowly in the silence of nighttime. He hardly sees anyone on his way to Gon's room: a nurse hurrying here and there, a patient shuffling somewhere -- but they're in the more inhabited areas of the hospital. Gon is somewhere far emptier.

Ging pauses as he takes a corner.

There's a boy sitting on a bench right in front of where Gon's room should be. His head is bowed and he's leaning his weight forward on his forearms. Not asleep, then; this is not the sort of posture a person could sleep in.

Ging is just about ready to take a step back, to turn back and leave this pale boy alone to watch over Gon. The boy doesn't look like he'd appreciate the company, all huddled into himself--

"If you're worried I'll tell Gon you came to see him, you shouldn't be. I won't tell him."

Ging looks at the boy again, and he's surprised to see him looking straight at him. The boy's eyes are an electric blue, and they look so very tired. Almost old. His bangs are mussed, as if he'd run his hands through them so often that they forgot how to obey the laws of gravity.

"What makes you think I was worried?" Ging asks.

The boy says, "When you saw me, you were planning to leave."

Ging sighs. Busted. "You must be Killua."

Killua's eyes tighten, and he straightens his spine. When he speaks, his tone is more alert than before. "You know about me?"

"I know about Gon," Ging corrects, which is more of a half truth than he'd like to admit. Gon is much easier to get information on than a Zoldyck. No matter who he turned to, he could never even find a picture of his son's best friend.

Ging is surprised that Killua accepts the explanation with a nod. Are he and Gon really that close, that knowing about one automatically means knowing about the other? Ging raises his eyebrows at him.

"I figured as much." Killua averts his eyes back to the glass that separates Gon's room from the corridor.

They stay like this for a while: Killua sitting on a bench with his back slouched, leaning his forearms against his thighs, and Ging standing awkwardly by the bench and crossing his arms across his chest.

Ging spends as much time watching Killua as he does looking into Gon's room. Maybe even more. The room on the other side of the glass pane is very still and very silent -- the sounds from the machines that are keeping Gon alive don't penetrate the window.

Killua, in comparison, is a study in life. He's also very still, also very silent; but if Ging sharpens his ears, he can hear Killua's breathing coming out in ragged gasps, and if he sharpens his eyes he can see the way Killua's fingers tremble.

What does he look like to Killua, Ging wonders. What does he sound like to this boy, who's very obviously on the verge of a breakdown?

Ging breaks the silence: "Should you still be here?"

Killua's eyebrows knit together. "Huh?"

"It's the middle of the night," Ging says. "Everyone else must've gone to sleep the day off or something, there's no one else here."

"Yeah," says Killua with a shrug. "Exactly."

Except there's nothing exact in what Killua has said; at least, nothing that makes sense to Ging, who's only come to Gon because he'd thought there would be no one to see him throw his pride away for the sake of sentiment.

Suddenly, Killua says, "Gon won't know if you go inside his room, you know. There's no one here to tell him except me, and I already told you I won't." 

He had, but Ging doesn't bother pointing it out. Instead he gives a small grunt and tightens his arms around his chest. Another reason he's come here so late at night was that he'd hoped not to have to _talk_.

"Gon's been hell-bent on finding you on his own for years, so knowing you came to see him will make him really unhappy. Gon doesn't want anyone to make his job any easier, especially not you."

A smile tugs at the corner of Ging's lips. "Attaboy," he murmurs approvingly. He can see the machinery keeping Gon alive rise and fall in his peripheral vision as if in response.

 _Prognosis: death_.

Ging's smile wavers, then melts into a grimace. The antiseptic smell of bleach is burning all the way down to his lungs, and there's lead forming in his stomach and weighing down his legs. He wishes he hadn't come.

And yet, he doesn't leave.

He doesn't go inside Gon's room, either.

"Nobody thinks he'll make it," Killua says. His voice cracks on the last word, either from pain or from puberty, Ging can't tell.

"Yeah," he says. "I've heard."

"What do _you_ think?" Killua looks up at him, and all of a sudden there's a fire in his eyes that makes him look so much more alive than any person Ging has seen before: determination, defiance and hope, all mingled in a blaze of a glance that leaves Ging breathless in its wake.

What _does_ he think?

He tries imagining a world in which Gon is dead, and he can't. His mind rebels against the notion, tries huddling away from what such a world would mean for Ging --

"He'll make it," Ging says with a confidence born of an inability to picture any other outcome. "One way or another, Gon will make it. He just needs a little push."

Killua smiles at him, then turns his gaze back in Gon's direction. "A little push," he echoes Ging and bunches his hands into fists. He mutters, "That's something _I_ can do," before falling silent.

Ging focuses on Killua. He sharpens his ears, but Killua's breathing is almost inaudible. He sharpens his eyes, but Killua's hands are steady. Briefly, he wonders if Killua has noticed the moment when tension drained out of Ging himself.

He doesn't go into Gon's room. Instead he nods at Killua and goes back the way he came, through the same fluorescent and the emptiness of the corridors during the nighttime. 

Killua will come through. Ging can tell that from the conviction in his voice and the stillness of his form. Killua will come through.

Gon will be all right.


End file.
